Cancer refers to a class of diseases which start with uncontrollable cell proliferation, then invade and destruct adjacent normal tissues and organs, can further create new growing sites for cancer cells, and finally carry off individuals. Over the past 10 years, to conquer cancer, there have been remarkable developments in modulating cell cycle and apoptosis and seeking new targets including oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes. Nevertheless, cancer incidence continues to increase as the civilization advances.
At present, a cancer therapy depends on surgical operation, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy of administering forty kinds of anti-cancer materials exhibiting potent cytotoxicity. However, most of these therapies are limited to only patients in early stage and special cancers, and thus cancer mortality is being increased continuously.
Furthermore, since most of anticancer drugs are highly toxic chemicals, anti-cancer drugs with low toxicity, particularly natural product-derived anti-cancer drugs, are being developed continually.
A chalcanthite, which is a kind of sulfate minerals composed of copper sulfate, contains CuSO4.5H2O mainly. The chalcanthite is a natural mineral with a very small amount of other minerals mixed, and is a blue crystal. The chalcanthite belongs to a triclinic system, is glassy-lustrous, and shows semi-transparent blue color. It is known that the chalcanthite is used for emetics, insecticides, pigments, fixatives, electrolytes, etc. There is a fear of toxicity because chalcanthite is a crude drug from mineral sources. For this reason, there has been a limitation in making use of the chalcanthite for clinical use actually, and further the fact that chalcanthite can be used for anti-cancer drugs has never been known to the public.
A Bamboo salt was first invented by II-hoon Kim (pen name is In-san). The bamboo salt is prepared by synthesizing a bamboo and a salt using a roasting process. Herein, the bamboo acts as cytoneogenesis to generate new cells, and the salt acts as sterilization and antisepsis. Specifically, the salt filled into the bamboo is roasted several times in a furnace at a high temperature, thus removing toxic materials from the salt and enhancing pharmaceutical effect. The bamboo salt has several advantageous effects such as the pharmacological effect of treating causes of inflammatory diseases by strengthening a stomach which is considered as a basis of a human body, the blood clarification effect for clarifying blood, the effect of detoxification and elimination of body waste accumulated in a body, and the effect for converting physical constitution type from an acidic type to a weak alkaline type. In addition, it is known that the bamboo salt has three to four times stronger anti-inflammatory action and sterilization ability against bacteria than the general salt, and thus such sterilization action leads to alleviation of fever in a human body.
The inventors found out that the egg white combined chalcanthite, in which the toxicity of chalcanthite was neutralized with the egg white, induced apoptosis of cancer cells to suppress the growth of the cancer cells, and thus were applicable to a natural anti-cancer drug. Furthermore, the inventors found out that the egg white combined chalcanthite was solely used or a composition comprising a mixture of the egg white combined chalcanthite and the bamboo salt can be used as an anti-cancer drug, thereby completing the present invention.